Movie review: ‘Tom of Finland’ suffers from boring script

Sunday

Dec 17, 2017 at 1:01 PMDec 17, 2017 at 1:02 PM

By Al Alexander/For The Patriot Ledger

Touko Laaksonen sketched out an enduring legacy with his homoerotic images of hyper-masculine men erotically flaunting their gay pride. So, why then is Dome Karukoski’s depiction of Laaksonen’s five-decade rise from closeted pornographer to celebrated artist so disappointingly flaccid? I suspect it’s because Karukoski lacks the nerve to give us the full-frontal version of the man known the world over as “Tom of Finland.” That pseudonym – hung on Laaksonen by his American publisher at Physique Pictorial magazine, Bob Mizer – also stands reflectively as the film’s boring, unimaginative title.

Karukoski is saved somewhat by a solid, unadorned performance by Pekka Strang as Laaksonen, a Finnish war hero who works as a respected advertising firm’s art director by day (heavy shades of “Mad Men’s” Salvatore Romano) and cruises the gay venues of Helsinki and Berlin by night. Tall, lanky and bearing a wisp of a mustache, Strang strongly resembles Laaksonen in stature, but Aleksi Bardy’s script seldom allows him to get inside the head of a character who refreshingly defies all gay stereotypes. His Laaksonen is stoic and – frankly – bland, a slave to the repressed demeanor shared by just about all of his fellow Finns, including his homophobic sister, Kaija (Jessica Gronkowski).

Oddly, their sibling rivalry is the movie’s main focus. Yes, they lived together, worked together and shared a love of drawing, but their relationship is never explored competently enough to warrant so much screen time. Their every scene is a mere rehash of the one before it, as Kaija deludes herself with the idea that all Touko need do is find the right girl. So on and on it goes, with Touko hidden away in his room, secretly drawing his depictions of muscle-bound men of authority encased in tight leather – or nothing at all – while Kaija frets over her brother being either imprisoned or murdered for his peculiar fetishes.

The only poignancy comes when they take on a handsome young border, Veli (a very good Lauri Tilkanen), who catches both of their eyes, but it’s a romantic competition Kaija crushingly has no chance of winning. The rest is mostly perfunctory bio-pic pap, as the filmmakers dutifully check off the highlights of Touko’s guilt-ridden life in chronological order. These bits include his arrest for cruising (or, as he calls it “pheasant hunting”) in Berlin; his creation of his alter ego, the manga superhero Kake, based on the hunky Russian paratrooper he killed during the war; his long love affair with the doomed Veli; his warm welcome to California, where he notes the straight guys are in the minority; and lastly, his alleged role in the burgeoning AIDs epidemic.

That’s a lot of stuff – five decades worth – to cram into one two-hour movie, and the resulting thinness glaringly shows, especially in the lame attempts by the makeup department to gracefully age the three main characters – Touko, Kaija and Veli – over a 30- to 40-year period. The sets aren’t much, either, mostly starkly furnished rooms. And the cinematography by Lasse Frank Johannessen is mostly dark and bleak – until the scene moves to sunny, anything-goes Southern California, where Touko’s artistry is championed by a couple of die-hard fanboys played by Jakob Oftebro and Massachusetts’ own Seumas F. Sargent.

The only elements that really stick are Laaksonen’s actual drawings, which can best be described as the male version of Vargas’ erotic pencil-and-ink drawings of voluptuous females. They are true works of beauty that have earned their places on the walls of some of the world’s most prestigious museums. And to think many of them once lay hidden behind a wall in a Helsinki apartment out of fear of the artist being arrested, or worse, sent to a sanitarium to be “cured” of his gayness. We’ve come a long way, baby. And it’s been an exciting ride. But judging by the tepid “Tom of Finland,” you’d never know it.

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
Wicked Local Kingston ~ 182 Standish Avenue, Plymouth, MA 02360 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service